


trainwreck everlasting

by andchaos



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Gen, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:18:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5581921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchaos/pseuds/andchaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels Mandy’s fingers then, creeping over his own. Without thinking—whether it feels right because Mandy thinks it feels right or feels right because he does—he switches the cigarette to his other hand and twines their hands together. Mandy squeezes.<br/>“Just think,” she repeats, laughing brightly again so that same ecstasy fills Ian, hot and bubbling and beautiful, “now we can do whatever we want. You and me…we found each other.”<br/>Ian laughs. “That sounds good to me.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	trainwreck everlasting

**Author's Note:**

> warning for implied/mentioned canonical child abuse (nothing graphic)
> 
> title (sorta) adapted from A World Alone by lorde :))
> 
> there was a severe lack of platonic soulmates ian and mandy so.....voila!

          Ian finds Mandy on a Saturday morning, when the sun is peeking over the tree line and the entire earth is quiet. His family’s van idles and stops on the outside of a derelict, small diner on the outskirts of a derelict, small town and the quiet music bumping out of his stereo skitters to a stop. He unlocks his door, then locks it again behind him, and he finds his way up the paved stairs and inside.

          The place is nearly empty so early in the morning, and no one is around to seat him. Ian takes a table near one of the windows overlooking a falling-apart building and picks up a menu tucked into the salt and sugar holder.

          A young woman finds him after a few minutes of flipping through the menu. Her deeply black hair is tied up in a messy bun, and strands of it escape all over, falling against her cheeks and her forehead and all around her ears. Her eyes are bright but tired as she sighs and readies her pen.

          “You gonna sit there playing with your dick all morning or are you gonna order something?” she asks. She blows a bubble with the gum she’s chewing and continues her dead stare at him. Her fingers find her nose ring and fiddle with it, spinning it in half circles over and over.

          Ian’s heart leaps when she talks, skips a beat, and then starts pounding. A warmth floods through him—that warmth they talked about, that warmth they promised—spiraling from his chest to his hands and to his feet and to his head, spreading all over. He flattens his hands on the table and looks up at her. Then he licks his lips. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, doesn’t know if he’s supposed to say anything, doesn’t know if he really has a choice.

          He settles on, “Well, it’s taken you twenty years, but better late than never.”

          Her eyes glimmer too, her painted lips quirking up into a beautiful smile.

          “Oh my fucking god,” she says. Ian tips his head back and laughs.

 

\- - -

 

          Ian never fully understood what it meant to feel a soulmate’s feelings until he met Mandy. They go out on her break and lay in the patchy grass beside the diner, watching the sunrise float higher and higher on the horizon until it’s less of a sunrise and more of a morning sun. She breathes in on her cigarette and Ian doesn’t feel the burn in her lungs, but he feels the relaxation that floods through her chest with her inhale, and the joy that filters in with her laughter.

          “I can’t believe this is happening,” Mandy says. She passes him the cigarette and he slots it in between his fingers instead, then brings it to his lips. He watches her as she takes a shuddering breath, feeling what Ian had when she was the one smoking. “This morning I woke up to the sound of my brother taking a dump and my dad breaking beer bottles. And now I’m fucking… _you’re_ fucking here.”

          Ian laughs too, overtaken with her elation, shared right out of her own body.

          “I know,” he sighs. “Twenty four hours ago, you know what I was doing? Fighting with my fucking brother over the phone. I took our car, you know? Been driving…just driving. For almost a month.” He gives a hollow laugh. Then he brightens. “Fuck, and now! Just think.”

          He feels Mandy’s fingers then, creeping over his own. Without thinking—whether it feels right because Mandy thinks it feels right or feels right because he does—he switches the cigarette to his other hand and twines their hands together. Mandy squeezes.

          “Just think,” she repeats, laughing brightly again so that same ecstasy fills Ian, hot and bubbling and beautiful, “now we can do whatever we want. You and me…we found each other.”

          Ian squeezes her hand back.

          “And we can spend all the time we want getting to know each other,” Mandy continues brightly. “Yeah…all the time we want.”

          Ian laughs. “That sounds good to me.”

 

\- - -

 

          “Where are you going?” Mandy asks his second night in town.

          Ian shrugs, picking at the sugar packet he was toying with while he waited for Mandy to get a break. She slid into his booth across from him as soon as she was free, and for a while they just talked. Now heat floods Ian’s cheeks, and he knows   Mandy can feel that same warmth tugging in his stomach, because she slides her hand over the back of his where he’s made a fist on the tabletop. He flicks his gaze to hers, grateful. He knows she can feel that, too.

          “Away,” he says vaguely. “Things at home got…ugly.”

          “I know ugly,” she assures him. “Tell me. It can’t be any worse than my house.”

          Ian laughs hollowly. “I’m…sick,” he says slowly. Mandy tenses, even her hand over Ian’s growing taut, and he quickly flips his palm to squeeze her hand reassuringly. “Not catching! And not terminal. Just…lengthy. I’m on medication. But I need stability. My family’s a fucking wreck. I just want to go out…start over. Where no one’s ever seen me messy, and no one’s ever worrying, and no one’s ever turning our lives upside down every other day. There’s six of us—the drama never ends. And I just need…”

          “To start over,” she finishes. “Of course.” She gives him a small smile. “You know, here’s as good a place to start over as any.”

          Ian shakes his head, but he’s not saying no. He doesn’t know what he wants.

          “I can’t just drop everything for a girl I barely know,” he says, only half teasing. “What would they say about me then?”

          Mandy smirks. “You’ve already dropped everything,” she points out, “and you may not know me, but you’re fuckin’ gonna.”

          Ian raises his eyebrows, a smile teasing his own lips. “Am I?”

          Mandy leans back in her seat, pulling her hand away. She crosses her arms over her chest. “Of course you are,” she says smugly. “You just found me. You really gonna let me go so easily?”

          “Not like I could never come back,” Ian says.

          Mandy rolls her eyes. “Don’t be difficult, Ian. Say you’ll stay. Long enough to know if you want to, at least.”

          Ian sighs. “You are some piece of work for a small town waitress.”

          Mandy flips her hair over her shoulder. “I’m a lot more difficult than your big city waitresses, Red. Just you wait and see.”

          Ian laughs. “I’m looking forward to it,” he assures her.

          Mandy has to go back to work after that, but for lack of anything better to do, Ian sits there waiting for her and ordering coffee after coffee, waiting for her to finish her shift.

          He spends about two hours, drinking coffee and going to the bathroom and playing on his phone, until Mandy reappears. This time, she’s changed into a slouchy gray t-shirt and jeans, and her hair’s falling around her shoulders in a cascade. Ian smiles when he sees her.

          “Ready to go?” she asks. Ian nods and tips his head outside.

          She sits in his passenger seat and fiddles with the dials on his radio while he drives, with her giving the directions from her side. Ian doesn’t know where they’re going, but he assumes it’s her home when they pull up to an old, falling-apart gray house with a dark-haired, blue-eyed boy sitting on the front steps smoking what’s clearly a self-rolled spliff.

          Mandy climbs out of the car and passes by the boy with a loose, “Hey, shithead,” as she heads inside. Ian can feel his disinterested gaze on his back as Ian passes him with an awkward nod.

          He walks in as Mandy’s disappearing around a doorway without looking back, and he follows her inside just as she’s stripping off her shirt, her back to the doorway. Ian stumbles back, startled, and his hands fly up to hastily cover his eyes.

          “Oh, shit,” he stammers. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

          Mandy shoots him a look over her shoulder as she strips out of her jeans as well and wraps a towel around herself before shimmying out of her underwear and kicking all her discarded clothes into the pile in the corner. She laughs.

          “Relax, Jesus. It’s like you’ve never seen a girl naked before.”

          Ian snorts. “Other than my sisters, I haven’t.”

          Mandy smirks. She flicks her fingers in his direction and says, “Gay.”

          Ian laughs with her as she heads out of the room for a shower. When she’s gone, he wanders back out into the living room and stops when he sees the boy from the front steps on the couch, playing a video game.

          “Hello,” Ian says, awkwardly.

          The boy raises his eyebrows impassively, almost disdainfully. “Who the fuck are you?”

          “Ian.” He eases his way onto the couch, a little bit away from the boy, but close enough to start sharing the bag of chips he has open on the coffee table. “You her brother?”

          “One of them,” he says. “Mickey.”

          Ian smiles at him. “Good to meet you, Mickey.”

          Mickey just stares at him like he’s a splotch of not very interesting slime accidentally tracked into the house.

          “Mandy’s boys don’t usually talk to me,” he says uneasily. His eyebrows near his hairline as he looks at Ian.

          “Jesus, no,” Ian coughs around the chips he stuffed into his mouth. “I’m her—her soulmate, I guess.”

          “You guess?”

          “I am,” Ian confirms, blushing a little. “Fuck, I—I am. I mean, that’s me.”

          Mickey looks at him for a few seconds, somehow both appraising and condescending. Then he looks back at the TV and says absently, “Hurt her and you’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”

          Inexplicably, Ian laughs. He blames it on something Mandy must be thinking about in the other room, but he knows it’s all him.

 

\- - -

 

          Ian laughs as he passes Mandy the joint, then coughs as the smoke floods his lungs.

          “You want me to move in?” he asks when he can breathe again.

          Mandy shrugs. “Don’t make it a big thing, asswipe. You’re paying a fortune on your motel room every night to spend most of your days here, hanging out with me or fucking my brother. Let’s just make it official and set you up in a bed on my floor.”

          “Okay, okay, you have a point, Ian laughs. “But Jesus, mention me and Mickey out loud again and he’ll kill you dead. We do _not_ need anyone else hearing.”

          Mandy waves her hand. “I’ve been keeping his secret for two years, you think I don’t know how to be fucking discreet by now? Fuck, thanks for the credit.”

          She passes him the joint again. Ian’s not sure if he’s laughing at her or the high. He grins at her anyway, eyes wide and glassy.

          “You love me,” he says.

          Mandy rolls her eyes. They pass the joint back and forth a few more times, and put on music as a low hum in the background when they stub it out and start talking. Ian likes just talking to Mandy—for the first time in a long time, he feels like someone’s actually listening. After awhile, Mandy twines her arm through his and leans her head down on his shoulder. Ian starts to stroke her hair. Her eyes soon get heavy, and she sighs against him.

          “I love you,” she whispers.

          Ian smiles softly and squeezes her arm in his. He whispers, “I love you too.”

 

\- - -

 

          Mandy is angry. Ian knows it before he finds her, he knows it as soon as he wakes up, before he even looks over into her bed above his. His stomach drops, partially with her anger and half because he worries it’s directed at him. He raises his head to peer into her bed.

          She’s awake, sitting up on her sheets and picking viciously at her nails and glaring at the wall opposite her.

          “What’s up?” Ian croaks, lifting himself onto one hand.

          Mandy turns her gaze to him sharply when he speaks, and the angry lines of her face soften just enough that Ian cautiously assumes that her ire is not directed at him.

          “Fucking hate everyone in this house,” Mandy mutters. “Everyone in my family’s a fucking psychopath.”

          Ian softens and sits up more fully. Gently, he asks, “Who is it this time?”

          Mandy just shakes her head. With a sigh, Ian gets up and joins her on her bed, taking her immediately into his arms. Mandy slumps against him fully, instantly, and Ian presses his face into her hair. She wraps her arms around his waist. He kisses the crown of her head.

          “Skip work today,” he says. “Let’s go out. I still have a full flask from right before your dad smashed that handle of vodka. We’ll go out and vandalize something.”

          Mandy laughs, and it sounds empty, but not as empty as before. Ian squeezes her close and then goes to make them sandwiches to take with them while Mandy gets dressed.

          They head out down the street in a random direction. Neither of them mention a destination, but they end up at the old, empty park a few streets down from her house. Nobody but drug addicts and drunk kids use it anymore, and sure enough, as they enter through the gate, Ian’s tipping his flask back and Mandy hefts her bag up higher her shoulder and says, “I have some nitrous, if you want.”

          They get drunk and they get even higher, and Mandy takes out the can of spray paint they stashed in her backpack as well. Ian’s busy twisting the swing around and around so much that the metal chain squeaks and threatens to break every time he spins it around again, while Mandy walks around writing in a large circle around the swingset he’s on. When she straightens up, shaking the can and apparently examining her work, Ian lifts his feet out of the dirt so the swing whips him in circle after circle. When it finally slows, he gets unsteadily to his feet, then laughs as he reads her handiwork.

          _COLIN IS A FUCKING DICK_

          Ian laughs. “What the fuck is this for?”

          Mandy just shakes her head, but she’s smiling now, already looser than before and Ian doesn’t think it’s just from the booze and uppers. He grins back.

          “Because he’s a fucking dick,” Mandy says, shrugging. “Mickey and Terry are too, but I only had so much room.”

          “Iggy and Tony not on your shitlist?”

          Mandy grins sharply. “Not today.”

          Ian laughs, and she gives him the nitrous as he passes her the flask. They toast each other silently.

          After, when they’re laying in the ground watching the gray clouds pass, Ian wraps his arm around her neck and they roll around, giggling, in the grass.

          When they settle, Ian twines his arms tightly around her and squeezes her hard to his chest.

          “You’re my best friend,” Ian mumbles into her hair.

          Mandy sighs. “You’re more than that,” she says.

 

\- - -

 

          Ian can hear the banging on the wall above the bed, and it’s spectacularly throwing off his rhythm.

          He pauses, then shouts, “You’re spectacularly throwing off my rhythm, Mandy!”

          Mandy’s scoff is loud enough to be heard through the wall. “It’s bad enough I gotta hear you two,” she yells, “but I have to _feel_ you too!”

          Beneath him, Mickey gives a groan much more agitated than the ones he had been making earlier, and he covers his face with his hands. Ian laughs, running his hand down Mickey’s side and rubbing his thumb into his hip.

          “I have to feel you every time you get laid, too!” Ian shouts. “You know how weird it is to get sex feelings when you’re not having sex?”

          “Well I’m horny as shit right now!” Mandy screams. “ _And_ I can hear you banging my brother! Can you quiet down or something so I can masturbate in peace?”

          Mickey makes an actual move to get out from underneath him, and Ian pins his shoulders, ducking down to capture him in a kiss to distract them both from Mandy on the other side of the wall, doing nothing that either of them wants to think about. Mickey’s tongue slips into his mouth and Ian is just getting his rhythm back when the headboard starts bumping into the wall again, and then Mandy’s fist is back on the other side—as is her screech.

          “I—can—hear—you!”

          Ian stops the driving of his hips and sighs, looking down at Mickey.

          “Me on top?” Mickey suggests.

          Ian sighs, burying his face in Mickey’s shoulder. Mickey strokes his hair.

          “We could go at it in the shower and kill two birds in one,” Ian says.

          “Fuck yes,” Mickey breathes.

          The shower’s much more slippery and difficult to maneuver when Ian wants to be able to kiss Mickey and see his face while they have sex, but at least Mandy’s loud semi-presence from the other room disappears. Ian counts it as a win.

 

\- - -

 

          Mandy splays her hand out the window, and Ian can see the bruises around her wrist from where her father gripped her too tightly the afternoon before. His gaze lingers on the injury for a moment before he turns his attention back to the road, sighing and slipping his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose.

          “I love the summer,” Mandy sighs, tipping her head back in her seat. Her feet, laced up in combat boots, are propped up on the dashboard. Her lips quirk up in a grin.

          “Me too,” Ian says. “Me and my brother used to spend all break selling weed out of a van with our neighbor.” He laughs. “My younger sister ran a daycare, and one day she left my other brother in charge so she could go drown some bitch at the public pool.”

          Mandy’s in tears laughing so hard as Ian tells her tale after tale of his summer escapades, and their laughter is lost in the wind rushing through the open windows of the van. Their beer cans, some empty and some full, are rolling around loudly in the backseat. Mandy’s eyeliner is leaking down her cheeks from the tears borne of the wind and her hysterics. Ian grins so wide his cheeks hurt.

          “Wait, wait,” Mandy says. “So which one was your favorite summer?”

          Ian glances sideways at her and smiles, shyly.

          “The summer I met this beautiful waitress,” he says.

          Mandy barks out laughter and slaps out for his arm. She looks breathless and red and gorgeous. Ian grins too, and eventually, Mandy sobers first. They’re quiet for awhile, just the sound of the stereo pumping out music lowly in the background. Then Mandy asks,

          “Do you ever think about going back?”

          Ian glances at her. “What? To my family?”

          Mandy shrugs. Ian sighs and stares out at the road in front of them.

          “Sometimes,” he says at length. “I think about them all the time, you know. Constantly. It’s like a constant ache in my chest, but sometimes it’s not so bad. I know why I needed to get away, and…You dull it, you know. You and Mickey.”

          He doesn’t notice Mandy’s fingers when they first find his arm, but he notices her knuckles, rubbing firm and soothing up and down his bicep. He leans into her touch and sighs.

          “Sometimes though,” he continues, “I think maybe I should. I haven’t seen them in months. I didn’t say much when I left. We fought, and we barely made up. I…I know I should go back, I just…”

          He trails off, then sighs, glancing sideways at her again. She smiles softly.

          “We should go sometime,” she says suddenly, all glimmering upbeat vivacity. “You and me. Mickey too, if you want. We can go see your family and then we can just…drive. Just go. See everything.”

          Ian laughs, but then he glances over at her and sees that she isn’t smiling. She looks bright-eyed and alert and serious.

          “You mean it?” he asks.

          He doesn’t mean for all the hope to flood into his system at once, but when Mandy lights up beside him, he knows his own feelings have betrayed him to her. Mandy beams.

          “Definitely,” she says.

          Mandy turns the radio up then, and she stretches her hand over the dashboard. Ian automatically takes his hand off the steering wheel and grips Mandy’s tight in his own.

          “I can’t wait.”

 

\- - -

 

          Ian’s the last to clamor into the car when he’s done hugging his family goodbye. They’ve decided to trade seats every hour or two so no one’s alone in the back for too long, and he sees Mickey’s been relegated to the backseat first when Mandy leans out the passenger side window and shouts, “Get in, asshole, we’re burning daylight!”

          Ian laughs and flips her off, and she gives him the finger back. She’s smiling brightly as she leans back into the car.

          With one last farewell to his family, Ian waves and heads around to take the driver’s seat in Mickey’s jeep, since he dropped the family van back off in the Gallagher driveway when they showed up there at the beginning of the weekend to a chorus of excited, inharmonic hellos.

          Mickey leans over the seats when Ian climbs in, ruffling his hair and grinning widely.

          “We’re finally heading out,” he says, enthused. Ian laughs brightly and twists around to kiss him hard, reveling in how beautiful he looks in the dimming afternoon sun. He turns to the front seat after, where Mandy’s glowing just as radiantly. Ian turns the keys in the ignition and revs the engine, just enough to make both Mandy and Mickey laugh delightedly. It sounds like the beginning of something beautiful.

          Ian looks back at Mandy. “Ready?” he asks her.

          Mandy grins at him and stretches her hand out over the front compartment between their seats, and Ian threads his fingers through hers and squeezes their hands together. Her joy pours into him, amplified by their connected fingers—but maybe that’s just his imagination. It swirls and mixes with his own, intensifying it, filling up him with his and her elation together until he grins so hard his cheeks ache dully.

          “Beyond ready,” Mandy says. “Let’s go.”

          The sun shines in the distance. Ian thinks that maybe he hasn’t had his favorite summer memory yet after all—maybe it all only started with Mandy. Maybe it’s just beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> [xoxox](http://bluenoahh.tumblr.com/post/136255586940)


End file.
